NVIDIA Refuels GPU Architecture for High-Octane Performance

By delivering what was once server-room HPC horsepower on a workstation-class machine, Watters said engineering groups can be assured of faster turnaround on simulation jobs. For example, allowing them to understand designs better before sending them out for certification testing while being to affect changes at the design engineer's seat rather than having to go through the protracted cycles of coordinating an iterative loop with an external simulation organization.

The coupling of the technology also keeps real-world photo realism and real-world physics turned on during all stages of the design cycle, Watters said.

If you're an auto stylist, you don't want to work in pastel colors, you want the actual design and assembly work done with photorealism turned on. When photorealism is on all the time, people make better design decisions.

Same can be said for a designer studying tradeoffs between esthetics and functionality for a wheel design. With the added horsepower of the Kepler-based Telsa/Quadro combination, they can get dynamic feedback on the structural load of the wheel design as they are working, inviting the exploration of lighter weight materials.

The increased number of cores supported by the Kepler architecture, in addition to other improvements, up the performance of the new Maximus architecture for tasks like simulation on an order of a fourfold increase, depending on the specific operation, Watters said. Not only does this increase allow for faster simulation and test cycles, but it also enables engineering groups to prove out more designs with simulation in the same amount of time.

NVIDIA's usual OEMs are supporting the new Maximus architecture, so expect to see workstations from Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Lenovo, and Fujitsu, among others. Leading CAD and CAE vendors such as ANSYS, Autodesk, Bunkspeed, Adobe, Dassault Systemes, and The MathWorks have also certified their applications to run on the new Maximus generation. GPUs based on the new Kepler-powered Maximus will be available in October.

Virtual Reality (VR) headsets are getting ready to explode onto the market and it appears all the heavy tech companies are trying to out-develop one another with better features than their competition. Fledgling start-up Vrvana has joined the fray.

A Tokyo company, Miraisens Inc., has unveiled a device that allows users to move virtual 3D objects around and "feel" them via a vibration sensor. The device has many applications within the gaming, medical, and 3D-printing industries.

While every company might have their own solution for PLM, Aras Innovator 10 intends to make PLM easier for all company sizes through its customization. The program is also not resource intensive, which allows it to be appropriated for any use. Some have even linked it to the Raspberry Pi.

solidThinking updated its Inspire program with a multitude of features to expedite the conception and prototype process. The latest version lets users blend design with engineering and manufacturing constraints to produce the cheapest, most efficient design before production.

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